Light of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 10)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He came because he needed to understand what Marin might intend. He came because he needed to understand if there was something that he might learn about why she had come to Par. And he came to discover if there was anything that would tell him why the Utu Tonah had come to Par.

  A tiny island appeared in the distance, separated from the main islands of Xsa. The pressure pushing out and away from him emanated from that island. He pointed and Elanne wrapped her cloak around her more tightly without saying anything to him.

  Tan began to descend toward the island.

  As he did, he ensured that his connection to the element bonds remained intact. If anything happened to him here, he would need those connections to get to safety. Spirit surged in him as well, but Tan was careful not to draw too strongly through spirit. Not yet. Doing so ran the risk of weakening him, and he might need all of his strength here.

  They settled to the ground on sandy shores. Water lapped softly and pulled on him through the bond. Earth pressed up through him as if noting his connection. A warm breeze gusted, touching along his cheeks and tearing at his cloak. The air smelled of the sea, but also of greenery and flowers, a scent that reminded him in some ways of Par now that the elementals had returned.

  “This is not part of Xsa,” Elanne said.

  In the distance, the outer rim of the Xsa Isles was only barely visible. On one, a massive peak rose toward the clouds. The others were little more than stretches of land that he could only make out through a shaping of water.

  “This is the right place,” Tan said. Even now, he felt the way that energy pushed back against him. It was something other than a shaping, but strong nonetheless. The only thing that reminded him of what he felt was the temple before he had repaired the Marks.

  Could it be that there was something like that here? Did he need to restore runes in this place to recover strength that had been lost?

  Tan reached through the spirit bond, letting the strength of spirit settle into him, and reached out from the bond, searching for a sense of understanding. Nothing came to him. This was not the same as the temple, then.

  “Where do you think that we should go?” Elanne said.

  “Listen to the wind,” he answered. “You can practically hear where we need to go.”

  Elanne closed her eyes and tipped her head to the side as she appeared to listen. Wyln pulled on her, but another wind elemental joined, one Tan had not experienced before. Not ara—ara preferred the coolness of the kingdoms and blew through Galen—and not ashi. Ashi gusted through Incendin, hot and dry. Wyln carried the scent of the sea, and the energy of Par, but this was not wyln. The only other elemental of wind that Tan knew of—Ilaz—had a strange buzzing energy and that was not what he detected here either.

  “There is pressure on the wind,” Elanne said.

  “On all the elementals,” Tan said. “We follow that pressure, and we can find where it comes from. Maybe we can understand why Marin came to Par.”

  “Maelen, you should know that the Mistress of Souls is respected in Par for a reason. She taught the people of Par a way to find peace, to understand our purpose. Marin might have a different reason for coming to Par, but those who came before her…”

  Tan didn’t need for her to finish. He understood. “Something happened here, Elanne. Something I need to understand. And you can feel the way that this pushes against us. These people knew shaping and seek to exclude the power of the elements.”

  He started forward, partly shaping his way and partly walking, all the time trailing after the sense of power that pushed on his ability to shape. Connected as he was to the element bonds, it did not prevent him from reaching for shaping, and he didn’t know if that was even its intent. Elanne followed him on a shaping of wind, but then, she had the connection to her elemental.

  They reached a flat expanse and in the distance, he saw a series of rectangular buildings set in something like a pattern. Tan wondered whether they would form a shape of a rune from above and whether this pattern was what he detected pushing on him. Earth and spirit sensing didn’t reveal whether any others lived here or who might be within the buildings.

  They approached carefully. The closer they got, the more certain Tan was that this was where he detected the pressure against him, but also the more certain he was that no one else lived here. At least not any longer.

  He stopped outside the nearest building and focused on earth and spirit sensing, searching for signs of life within. He detected nothing. Pushing open the door, he made his way in.

  Inside looked like a home that had not been maintained. Dust settled over everything. Three chairs angled toward a table. A large fire pit took most of one wall. Rows of empty shelves lined another wall, with broken shards of pottery strewn across the ground in front of it.

  Another doorway led beyond this room, but Tan didn’t need to go back there to know that no one lived here.

  “What happened here?” Elanne asked with a whisper.

  Tan wondered the same. It appeared almost as if there had been an attack, but he saw no sign of anyone who might have been here. In that way, it appeared more like it had been abandoned rather than attacked.

  They left this building and went on to the next. It was set at a slight angle to the last, one that would be important if these buildings really comprised some sort of pattern. Before they left, he would need to look from above to understand the pattern. Not a binding. The buildings were bunched too close together to form a binding like those found in Par, and in Vatten, but the pattern mattered.

  The second building was much like the first and equally abandoned.

  They went from building to building, searching silently, and found nothing. By the time they reached the center of the cluster of buildings, Tan no longer expected to find anything. The one near the center was both taller and spread out in either direction more, sprawling in a way that the others had been compact. The design was simple, nothing ornate like could be found in Ethea, or even Incendin, and not the majestic size that he’d found in Par. These were simple square buildings, but tall, as if their size made up for the lack of design.

  As he opened the door, air squeezed out like a pent-up breath, carrying a putrid stink with it.

  Tan gagged and covered his nose, pulling his cloak up over his face.

  “What is—” Elanne started to ask but cut off when the stench hit her.

  Using a shaping of wind, Tan created a bubble around himself, trying to draw fresh air into the shaping so that he wouldn’t have to smell the stench. The shaping held and helped, but some residual of the stink clung to him. He couldn’t tell what caused the smell.

  The room on the other side of the door was massive, spreading to either side, with a dais near the far wall. A large stone lectern rose from the middle of the dais, and sculptures on either side were carved in stone, cast in grotesque figures. Two lanterns hung on either side of the dais, and Tan shaped a thin streamer of fire into them. Light flickered suddenly, filling the room, bouncing from mirrors overhead that he hadn’t seen before.

  “Where now?” Elanne asked.

  Tan glanced over and noted that she held a shaping similar to his, but her elemental swarmed within it, likely keeping the air for Elanne fresher than what Tan experienced. He pointed to a doorway behind the dais. It was the only other point of entry into this room and likely led to the massive tower they saw from outside.

  Passing through the room, Tan paused to study the sculptures. They were exquisitely made, carved from a dark stone, and smoothed so that they reflected the light from the lanterns as well.

  As he pushed on the door leading past, he sensed something off.

  Tan wrapped a shaping of fire and earth quickly, readying for whatever might be on the other side.

  But as the door opened, he saw nothing.

  A wide stair blocked his view, and as he stepped around it, he saw the source of the stench. Bodies, dozens of them, were strewn about the floor and even up the steps
as if they were caught while trying to run. All wore a similar white gown, and a few had faded headdresses. Decay had claimed them, stealing away recognizable features, leaving them as little more than dry husks and skeletons.

  “How long do you think they’ve been here?” Elanne asked.

  Tan shook his head. He didn’t know how long it would take bodies to decompose to this point, but there had been no effort to preserve them, so they would likely have reached this stage quickly.

  He made his way through the bodies, stepping carefully to avoid arms and legs, afraid to step on one. There was nothing here that gave any insight into what might have happened here.

  Releasing the fire shaping that he’d held, he sent it sweeping through the bodies. As dry as they were, the flames burned hot and quick, before disappearing in a flash. Tan pushed on a wind shaping, trying to clear the air of the scent of rotting bodies and the char that he suspected would linger. Only then did he release the shaping that he held around him.

  “They should have been given a proper burial,” Elanne said.

  “Is that their custom?”

  “Not in the ground. Xsa sends their dead back to the sea. Their leaders are often sent in ships, which they light afire. Most others will be simply dropped from their ships to let the sea claim them.”

  “They have been returned to the Great Mother. That is all that matters.”

  The troubled expression knitting her brow let Tan know that Elanne wasn’t certain that was true.

  He started up the stairs, curious what might be in the upper levels of this tower. Had these women come from above or had they run from the outer sanctuary? He doubted that he would find answers, but needed to look.

  “Do you think Marin did this?” Elanne asked, following closely behind him.

  “I don’t know.” Marin could shape spirit, but would she have been able to do something that killed so many? It was possible, Tan decided, especially as she had found others with the ability to shape spirit, and even more likely if she had some way of using the darkness.

  The stairs continued up and up without stopping. Tan shaped his way up, drawing up and around the stairs as they switched directions until they reached a landing high above where they had started.

  A wide room spread open before them, empty much like the sanctuary had been. Sculptures much like those below sat in each corner, with faces so well carved that they practically watched them. Each sculpture was made with the same slick dark stone. There was nothing else here. No decorations. No shelves, as he had seen in some of the other buildings. Not even any chairs. Nothing.

  As Tan made his way through the room, looking from sculpture to sculpture, he realized that the energy that he’d been feeling that pressed against his shaping came from here.

  He stopped and turned slowly in place, reaching out with his connection to the elements to understand what he detected.

  Power, but one that he didn’t fully understand.

  “Why is it pushing inside of me?” Elanne asked.

  Tan glanced over at her and saw her gripping her head as if in pain.

  Using spirit, he layered this onto her and found a familiar darkness trying to crawl into her mind. With a shaping of spirit, he pulled the darkness off and bound it within a bubble of spirit, where it hung suspended in the room like a cloud.

  “Better?”

  Elanne nodded. “That… that darkness,” she said, motioning to the indistinct cloud of darkness that floated in the air, “wanted to get inside of me. I felt it calling to me.”

  Tan hadn’t and wondered if spirit or the connection to the spirit bond had protected him. Something had.

  “You’re safe now.”

  She shook her head. “Safe? It’s still here, Maelen. You may have stopped part of it, but I feel it like a sand weevil trying to crawl under my skin and work its way inside of me.”

  Tan looked at the sculptures. Compared to the simple decoration that he’d found everywhere else, they were much more ornate, almost as if they didn’t belong. Could they be the source?

  But Marin had used a different method in the past, hadn’t she? The connection had come from the way that she’d disrupted bonds. For these sculptures to be responsible…

  Tan had to know.

  He started by shaping earth, but realized that he might need more than only earth, and added each of the other elements, drawing from the bonds that he shared. Then, before attempting anything more, he added spirit. First, he drew from himself, but then he pulled from the bond as well, suspecting that he would need strength when dealing with something like the darkness if that were what this was.

  Then he pressed that shaping upon the nearest sculpture.

  The shaping met resistance and then nearly slipped off as if the slick nature of the stone had been designed to throw shapings off. Tan pulled more strongly through the bond, reaching for the connections, and pushed the element strength into the sculpture, trying to steady it so that it wouldn’t slip free again.

  As he did, the sculpture began to writhe, as if something alive.

  Tan pressed, afraid to release it now. If he did, would the darkness be unleashed even more?

  “Maelen!”

  Elanne called to him in a panic and Tan glanced back to see that the other sculptures had also begun to move. They slithered forward, crawling toward them.

  Elanne backed against him, shaping the wind to push against the sculptures, but Tan knew that her shaping would slip past, much as his did.

  He didn’t know how to destroy them with shaping, not without drawing significant energy.

  But what if he didn’t have to destroy them?

  Elanne grunted, and he felt the strength of her shaping. She pulled on the wind, sending it in a spiral as if trying to throw the sculptures back, but the wind slid past them, over them, and left them otherwise untouched.

  “Help me with the binding,” Tan said.

  “Binding?”

  Tan turned the focus of his shaping to the stone and started creating the binding, trying not to think about how this shaping had seemed to activate these sculptures, or what it meant that the sculptures seemed to press darkness from them, attacking Elanne.

  He started by making the central circle, adding the spiraling arms. As he did, he made certain to add the touch of each element at the end of each arm, securing it with something similar to the Mark that he’d found in Par.

  The sculptures nearly reached them.

  Tan didn’t have much time. Drawing on spirit, he sent it through the center of the rune and created the bond.

  Light flashed, and the binding took hold.

  The sculptures each stopped moving. The darkness that had hovered in the air, contained in the spirit shaping, dropped to the ground before disappearing.

  Tan pressed through the binding, curious what he would find. Buried beneath the connection to the binding, he detected the way it held them. The pressure against him that tried to push back his shaping had disappeared as if the binding held that in check.

  Elanne sighed. “What was that?”

  “An attack.”

  “And the binding?”

  Tan reached past the binding, wondering if he could do more than contain the darkness. Would he be able to destroy it?

  Using spirit and pushing through the spirit bond, Tan focused on the way that the binding held the sculptures in place. The power of each element was required and pulled upon the bonds as well. The darkness struggled but didn’t manage to get free.

  The binding held.

  There was reassurance in knowing that he could bind the darkness, that he could hold and suppress it much as the ancient shapers had done, but that wasn’t what he really needed. For them to find a measure of safety, he had to find a way to remove the darkness altogether.

  But spirit would not be enough. Even connected to the spirit bond, Tan didn’t dare push so hard against the darkness. Doing so risked the binding failing, and risked his inability to restore it.
Now that it was in place, he didn’t want to risk removing it and losing that connection.

  He released his connection to spirit and looked around the room. “We need to keep others from coming here until I can find a way to destroy these,” he said.

  “You can’t destroy the sculptures!”

  Tan shook his head. “They’re imbued with too much of the darkness.” Almost as if Nightfall himself reached through them. Tan knew so little about Nightfall, but he had faced him twice now and felt the strength that the ancient power possessed.

  “But you’ve managed to secure a binding.”

  Tan checked the binding again. It remained intact. “Do you know a shaping that might deter others from getting too close?”

  “Not a shaping,” Elanne said, “but there might be a bonding that I know.”

  12

  Another Plan

  The return to Par left Tan tired. When they landed atop the tower, he intended to go to Amia and to see Alanna, but a pulsing from the summoning coin in his pocket drew his attention.

  Elanne looked over Par. “I thought I knew about my people,” she began, “but then you came, and now… now what I thought I knew is different.”

  “Not different. You were raised in Par-shon, and you heard some of the history of Par, but I don’t know that anyone who still lives here really knew Par.”

  “There are some.”

  Tan nodded. Some. Maclin knew more than most. The old man served in Tan’s household at the estate and had served the prior Utu Tonah as well, but he had a connection to Par. Tolman and Garza as well. Others, likely, too. But they remembered a Par that was no more, even as they wanted it to return. Tan understood that interest in finding the connection to the past. He once had a similar interest in understanding the kingdoms’ ancient shapers, thinking that they possessed understanding that had been lost, but over the time that he’d been in Ethea, he had learned that the ancient shapers’ understanding of the elementals had been less than what he knew. Tan had discovered more about the elementals than any of those ancient shapers ever had learned.